Listen up, this article is for those people who don't play magic too often competitively, but find it fun as a casual way to pass time, my story goes as follows:The Beginnings
Well, I had heard of this trading card game which everyone was playing...called magic the gathering, to me, it was just pieces of cardboard which I really didn't understand, nothing more than a simple trend was what I reminded myself...just like POG and Marbles, it'll fade away soon...and it did, I hadn't even thought about it for about 5 years since I first experienced it...then, in 1999, while trying to pass time in school, a friend introduced me to the game...I was still skeptical...but I tried it. While I was playing that day, soemone else walked by in the hallway and mentioned they had played the game before, I asked him if he had the cards, and he said he did, so I payed him $5 for a deck of 60 cards, and one day during history class, made my first deck, minotaur sligh.
The Result: Getting into the game takes a good knowledge of the rules, and me/my friends had very little. We played rules like only one creature can block a creature, cumulative upkeep meant you needed to pay what the card said once a turn, and cards like elephant grass and illusionary wall were broken. Finally, after a few visits to the local cardshop, and meeting some people in school, we started to develop a keen interest and more insightful view into the game.
The Challenges: Well, here's the thing that seperates me from other players, I've been playing this game for over three years now, and even though there are regular tournaments/FNM in our city, I've only played in 3 sanctioned events in my entire magic career...the reason, magic doesn't appeal to me as a highly competitive game, and in fact, it's only a casual game to pass time...me and my friends play a couple of games at lunch, with few edition/type rules that just limit to no unglued/proxy/fake cards, and that's about it...you can't believe the fun that's had when you play like that. So many decks over the years have been made, some of my personal touches were serra goblin (fast goblin punching in the beginning, shadow weenies in the middle, serra angels and serra avatar as the deathblow), elfball, and tim.
My Advice to the Newbie:
1)Don't start off going in to tourneys and events...it's healthy to visit the local cardstore, but it's better to play casually before anything else...playing casually allows one to grasp the concepts, learn the rules, and explore the different colours/combinations. When I first started playing, I went to red, then white, then green, then blue, then finally black earlier this year...I only switched colours when I had a good grasp of the strengths/weaknesses of the cards.
2) Don't make a deck off the internet, it just doesn't work unless it's your own creation..it's alright to use the internet as a guide, but what makes a deck work is 90% a person's feeling/strategy with the deck, and 10% luck, and making a deck of the internet or other source basically makes you rely on the 10% luck.
3) Don't play multi-color...I can't stress this enough for you, you can't start off magic with a 2 color deck because you have more problems to begin with...the most powerful decks throughout time were single colors, so a newbie deck can still be competitive and mono-color...my favorite starting color was red because it had creatures, dd, and destruction, so it helped enforce basic concepts...choose a color right for you, and stick with a mono-color deck.
4) Finally, persistance...don't give up no matter how many times you lose or something you do wrong, everyone's a newbie at one point remember, so the person that beats you in a game has had nearly the same experience as you, so there's always potential for growth no matter what, remember, finkel was a newbie at one point, so were the other champions of magic, so you can be as good as them with a little persistance
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posted August 25, 2001 09:53 PM
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